Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Sports Media | Morgan wants the 'human touch'

Dave Morgan, senior vice president of content and editor-in-chief of the USA Today Sports Media Group, said Quickish-style aggregation could be popping up on a number of their sports sites, as widgets or themed modules -- perhaps a Quickish for high school sports or a Quickish for MMA.

When I spoke with Morgan yesterday, he said aggregation has an important role to play in delivering sports news. “I think the right answer for us is not one or the other. We’re going to be creating something unique for our properties and audience," he said. “I always think the human touch on top of anything we can do from an algorithmic standpoint will be very key."

He means you can't just have a formula for a computer to follow that will give you the content you want on your site; you need a human being to curate the content.

It's a pretty basic idea (though not one Gannett has appeared interested in up to this point). The question is why they felt the need to buy a company (Quickish) that had someone doing this instead of just following the example. Quickish was just a guy, not an algorithm. Couldn't they figure out how to do what he was doing through hard work?

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."